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Unable to set start page (to windows form) in MFC application

At a broader level, I'm converting a MFC application (MFC 6.0) into Windows Forms application (Visual Studio 2013). I read certain blogs that describes that this conversion is possible. By this conversion I can re-use code written in MFC, only I will need to create UI. However I will need to understand the previous code and may need to re-write it a bit.
I got the motivation from here and here.
I have performed following steps so far.
Opened Visual C++ 6.0 project in Visual Studio 2013.
Build it successfully.
Then added CLR support to it, and fixed errors.
Added a Windows form, and added controls to it. As mentioned here.
Added functionality and build it successfully.
Now when I run this application, then it still point to old MFC window.
I'm missing certain settings which will change the rendering window from MFC to WindowsForm. What am I missing here?
Addition to that, I see problem with this approach as described by #Roger in comments, and I understand that. So, I wanted to know for any tool/utility which may convert legacy code into C#. Does such utility available?
TIA.

The code you are referring to seems suitable for amending a MFC application with a few forms as child windows to make use of .NET features. However, the main window is another story. You wrote the application is huge, so I suppose you don't want a simple form as your main window and rather have some kind of MDI interface in mind. If you replace the CMainFrame in the legacy MFC application, it just doesn't make sense to maintain an old CWinApp class. Anyway, if you are hell-bent on going down that path, you may want to have a look at an old CodeProject articel (.NET1.x, .NET2.x) to get a better grasp at the whole concept.
But as Roger already suggested, it would be a wise choice to find a nice GUI framework, perhaps even WPF instead of WindowsForms, and do a GUI rewrite -- especially if one part of the motivation for the conversion is to move to newer UI concepts. If your C++ program logic is well separated in your MFC project, put it in a COM server and make use of interoperability.

Workflow with C# in Visual Studio

I normally code with PHP, I am used to opening up my editor of choice and going away at it, coding classes,methods, etc. It is fairly easy as there is no GUI to worry about.
Last night I spent the whole night following a couple tutorials with C# in Visual Studio, it's turning out to be harder then I thought it would be. Once thing that I am not use to is, all the tutorials have you add a form object like a text box or button, then have you double clikc it to get to the code part, you then enter some code for that method. Then back to the form and re-peat
This seems very hard as you are never really working on "just the code" so 1 question is, is it always like that or just because i'm new and following tutorials?
Another question, when I see source code online to do certain functions, say I see a class I would like to try using, how can I use that class in the existing form class created by VS, do you somehow import other classes or do you add them right to the form code you are working on?
I'm sure that didn't make much sense but hopefully it does to someone, i'll try wording it better if not.
I should add that this was with WPF, also I feel like you have to learn 2 languages, the C# which has very similar syntax to PHP so that doesn't seem too difficult and the for GUI that's like a whole diff language

You can download the classes you are interested into.
Then you go to the Solution Explorer panel and you add existing items.
This will COPY the files to your project.
In order to use those classes you need to declare that you wan to use them.
So, what you have to do is to say something like
using FooNamespace;
Then you are ready to use the classes.
The name space is declared right before any class. You can go edit it.
Now about the forms. Each form is a Class and it consists of three files
ClassForm.cs
ClassForm.designer.cs
ClassForm.resx
You ONLY need the first one. Right click and view code. You can go there and use it.

Many questions, Many answers
Difficulty and Repetition
you can add form objects via the designer or you can hit the source button (CTRL-PgDn). From there you can edit elements in asp and html just like any php IDE. I do most of the work in source. I am a real programmer so I can never do the drag and drop. With intelligence and time you learn the properties and what to do.
to make complex pages you just have to know what you are doing.
What I started with VS I had the same feelings as you, but i have gotten into the flow of it.
As far as the code behind, you are just hooking methods up to the asp elements that get called by the built in code. You can add your own classes, functions, everything in the code behind or in separate files, just like c++, php, whatever.
Hope that helps, VS is really powerful and runs smooth when you learn where things are, been using it for years now and I'm still learning. Bottom line, never use drag and drop and just play with it.

unfortunately the .net world love drag-drop controls. so most tutorials are designed around this concept. drag a textbox on the to form. drag a button onto the form. double click button image to get the click handler.
it's not needed, it's just the approach for most people using visual studio. being that this is a WPF project everything can be done from code, or xaml markup. you don't need the WYSIWYG editor.
as for adding/referencing classes first you need to reference the assembly the class is located in. your core .net types (part of the BCL, base class library) are automatically included as references. then you add a using statement to the appropriate namespace. then you can instantiate the object.

There are ways to have a C# interactive window; see this question. Alternatively, you don't need to use a form, but you could also create a command-line application.
As for the second question, you can add a new class to your project and then use it in your form. There's really no additional step, except that if the namespaces are different, then it is easier if you import that namespace (via using).

Partly, yes, because you're new and using tutorials.
Partly, no, because you're working with forms, and you really don't want to hand-code those by hand.
If you just want to play with C#, and not concern yourself with forms and display, look for information on Console application. Instead of worrying about buttons and textboxes, your worst nightmare will be Console.WriteLine();
Here are some console-based C# tutorials:
C# Station tutorial
C# Yellow Book - it's a PDF. It's good.

Yes, it is exactly because you are following the video tutorials which are almost always tailored for beginners... Most of us making a living working in VS, developing WPF solutions do not even use the visual editor but instead work directly with XAML to build our UI and have very little or no code in the code behind files following the MVVM pattern.
To answer your second question, most of your classes that "do stuff" which is not directly intertwined with the UI should be in a separate class library (dll file) and should not even be referenced directly by your main UI project (in order to facilitate loose coupling) but instead accessed using some form of Dependency Injection, typically utilizing Interfaces.
The code that responds to user interaction should be in your ViewModel classess which are typically a data context for your views and these VM classes are typically using service agents which implement different Interfaces in order to use code stored in the class libraries mentioned in the previous paragraph.
Now, it is possible to just double click on a button and write all your code in that method created for you in the code behind file just like with Winforms, but just like in the Winforms world that leads to code that is hard to maintain, that is tightly coupled to your user interface and very difficult to test so try to resist that instant gratification and invest some time in learning the MVVM pattern, DI and OO design patterns which facilitate code reuse, decoupling and testability...
Hope this helps...

It really depends on what you are trying to learn. I don't think I would start off with WPF if I was using C#. I would start off with a console application to get the basics of the language down, then move down to a simple WinForms application, and finally to WPF where you started.
But yes, your questions about how the editor works is correct. It's how that platform works.

Components for WPF similar to the simplified Visual Studio

I would like to make a support plug-ins in my program.
For example in my program there are several tabs in one tab is the editor in which the code is written also in that tab has a button run.
After pressing the button run occurs a compilation of source code and its execution.
The results of work are displayed in the other tab.
I would like to find such a component in which there are:
Syntax Highlighting, Debugger, Analogue of solution explorer
Thank you very much for your answers.
I would like to bring more of clarity to my question.
I want to do something similar to that is shown in the screenshots below
On a single tab there is the editor and at the other tab displays the results.
To write plug-ins I'd like to use C #.

I guess the best place to start is AvalonDock from CodePlex, specifically what you are trying to do is a Tabbed User Interface.
Keep in mind that even with a TabbedWindows framework build/debug and syntax highlighting are not for free and you will have to find icons and design the UI mostly yourself.
for code coloring there are also many components, also free, like Scintilla .NET

You obviously understand that Visual Studio is a very complex application, so rewriting portions of it will be difficult. There are components available to help you, like the ICSharpCode text editor. In fact, that whole project is probably quite valuable.
However, when thinking of plugins and actually writing code for it, I'd personally go down the MEF route. In fact, this is the very framework that VS.NET 2010 uses for extensibility. Provide your user/developer with a set of libraries to code against (like an SDK), and let them use a Visual Studio Express edition to write proper code :)

As source code editor you can use AvalonEdit (it is great, in some aspects even better than VS code editor), solution explorer is fairly easy to create and debugger is way too language-specific to be a reusable component (you didn't specify what language are you developing for!).
The whole thing can be packaged into AvalonDock, so you get the draggable and dockable panels - it even has VS 2010-like skin (and again - is very easy to implement even with only very basic WPF knowledge).
Or you can use the Visual Studio Isolated Shell - it allows you to use the Visual Studio interface in your program (the end users don't have to have VS installed!), but it requires extensive knowledge of VS API (if you ever developed VS extension you know what I am talking about). For example Civilization V used this approach for it's modding environment, but the result smells as stripped VS with custom splash screen, not as professional product. There are many buttons and config. options that don't work, some features that would be expected from such program (and easy to do in custom app) didn't get in because it would be nigh impossible to implant them into the VSIS etc...
EDIT: You may also eventually be interested in this.

Is there a utility that can monitor open windows/ in .net winforms?

This is a general question, but I'll explain my specific need at the moment:
I want to find the framework class that enables one to choose an image at design-time. I can find the editor that is used at run-time - its the Drawing.Design.ImageEditor. At design time, however, a different editor pops up which allows one to choose an image from resources.
I'm guessing I could run some kind of program, then open up the image editor, from the property grid, and see what new windows/classes have been created?
Thanks

Yes, you can see what's being used by using another instance of Visual Studio and use Tools + Attach to Process (managed) to look at the call stack. It is a Microsoft.VisualStudio.Windows.Forms.ResourcePickerDialog. That is not something you can use in your own code, the Visual Studio designer assemblies are not re-distributable. Nor would they be useful, they monkey with the design-time state of the project.
Making you own isn't that hard, just use Reflection to iterate the properties of Properties.Resources and find the ones that have the Bitmap or Icon type. Display them in a ListView to allow the user to pick one. Adding resources at runtime isn't an option.

A tool with similar functionality to what you mention is Spy++ which you can find in your Visual Studio folder on the start menu (under the sub menu Visual Studio Tools).
However, if I understand you correctly, I don't think the design time editor you're talking about is written in managed code and even if it was, I'm fairly sure it's not in the framework. It's just part of Visual Studio itself and as far as I know you can't get hold of the source code for that.

How can I create my own form designer?

I'm starting my first C# project, and I want to make a "form designer" (like the one in VS).
The idea is, there will be a visual form designer with a limited toolbox, which will generate Python code (later more) to create the same form.
Problem is, I have no idea how to even get started. First of all, I have the form designer in VS: how do I make a "form-within-a-form?"
Next... I have no idea how complicated this is going to be. I suppose I could just make little boxes appear beside each control created on the form when it is clicked, for resizing, and make a textbox appear on it when double clicked or something, to change the text in it... Things like this.
So another thing I would like to know is this:
I do have programming experience in C and C++, I've done PHP for a number of years and am starting with Python as of recently. I've generated forms dynamically in VB6. Given this experience, am I in way over my head with this project?

this looks like a really good place to start. It has a pretty good example to get you started. You can even download his source (registration required).

It sounds like you're aware it's non-trivial for a C# first-timer. If you keep it pretty simple, it sounds like you're heading in the right direction (although a web-based form designer might be easier).
SharpDevelop would be an example of a full-featured IDE that can be re-purposed, but that's way over the top.
Good luck!

For most people starting out in C#, this project would be too much. With your VB6 background, you may be able to pull it off, though.
Here's a hint: the Visual Studio Windows Forms designer draws controls on its surface - by asking the controls to draw themselves.